Need money? Win the lottery with vulture brains!

Everyone is notoriously broke in the New Year after spunking loads of money on presents, the big feed and evenings down the pubs and clubs desperately celebrating the close of one miserable year and the start of a new, equally worthless one.

However, help is at hand in the form of South African medicine. Now, this isn't some herbal prozac with strange side-effects to help you stave off taking your own life in January 2010, but rather, something that will enable you to have mystical visions to help you win the lottery.

South African traditional medicine is called muti and in there is a product which encourages you to smoke dried vulture brains.

That's right. Essentially, you're required to make a joint out of the brains and inhale the vapours. Vendor Scelo, who trades in the downtown muti markets of Johannesburg, explains: "Everybody asks for the brain. You see things that people can't see. For lotto, you dream the numbers."

A tiny speck of birdbrain in a bottle retails at 50 rand (around £4) while a whole vulture could be worth £170 with the bones and feathers used to make other nonsensical trad. arr. cures.

Apparently, the vulture's head is the most desired part since it gives users "the bird's excellent vision that helps them fly out of nowhere to descend on carcasses". I have to be honest, my abilities to sniff out a cadaver and descend on it have been utterly hopeless for some time now.

Former lottery winner, Cyril Adkins (pictured) said of the product: "I won the lottery jackpot thanks to getting wasted on vulture brains. I didn't bother drying them out. I just slapped 'em in and sucked it up through a pipe with a quart of rum in to help it down. I didn't even buy a lotto ticket. I blacked out for 6 weeks and woke up with a giant novelty cheque that said I'd won £6,000,000 and I haven't bothered going to work since."